Fight For Your Life

(I think I was standing up in the ring just fine until about age 8 ; that’s when life cold cocked me and I was on the mat for 36 years and I’ve only recently gotten up.

I know I’ve been laying dormant for more than 3 decades because I’ve never felt this way before.

It’s like that old joke from a Sex and the City episode – I believe – that finds some characters discussing female orgasm and one says “I’m not sure if I’ve ever had an orgasm.” And I believe Samantha replies “If you’re not sure then you haven’t.”

My existence prior to my personal breakdown was a coward in a foxhole. Now I do love to mix my metaphors but I do not like to use war metaphors because I would NEVER have the courage ,even if drafted, to go into combat. It would be me and Muhammad Ali on the same cell block. But it’s the image that came to my mind because even though a justifiably terrified soldier hunched down in a hole is still a definite participant in battle, he is also doing his best to avoid it.

I think on a conscious and subconscious level I have been doing my best to avoid confronting my inner axis of fear for just over 36 years. Sure I managed to function relatively well enough to look like I was an active participant in the war of life. I worked. I obeyed the laws of my nation. I paid my taxes. I treated waiters and all public facing employees with the utmost respect. I tried to be kind and supportive to the people I cared about. I fell down all the time tying to walk as how I thought a good person should walk through life. These are things every human, who has ever existed and who exists today and who will exist once we finally have flying cars, has struggled with. I am not a snowflake.

I guess what I’m trying to say in a long winded and confusing manner is that I feel like I’m done faking the big things in my life. I’m done tap dancing for Assholes. I will continue to be civil and obey the polite strictures of society but I’m not going to hide my true stripes anymore. If you want to be important to me, love me or leave me. I am done negotiating. Life is too fucking short.

I am now that new soldier who walks up to his commanding officer and says “Fuck this war. Throw me in jail. To paraphrase e.e. cummings: there is just some shit I will no longer eat.”

I am born again. I am the Phoenix made man. I am the new alpha and the new omega. I am my own perpetual motion machine. I am for the first time in my life staring back at the sun. I am melodramatic. But, hey, at least I’m me now. These are the ABC’s of me, baby. Let’s get to know this dude.)

Right so before that insanely long left turn at Albuquerque, I was saying the following:

Life is about grappling with the good, bad and undefinable. I’m scared to enter the ring but, FUCK IT, life is going to have to knock me down this time. I’m done taking a dive.